ERP Executive Leadership
Lead the ERP Transformation—Not Just the Steering Meeting
ERP sponsors and executives carry responsibility for priorities, decisions, resources, governance, change, and business outcomes. Yet many leaders are never taught what effective ERP sponsorship actually requires.
ERP Client Leadership: How Executives and Sponsors Lead Successful ERP Transformation provides a practical operating model for the client leaders responsible for guiding the transformation.
ERP leadership cannot be outsourced. Vendors advise and assist—the client still owns the enterprise decisions.
The LEadership Gap
ERP programs need more than executive sponsorship in name.
Ceremonial Sponsorship
Funding approval and steering attendance are not the same as active transformation leadership.
Governance Without Decisions
Steering meetings can become status updates instead of forums for tradeoffs, priorities, risk, and accountability.
Blurred Client Ownership
Partners and project teams may be asked to carry decisions that ultimately belong to the client organization.
Readiness Pressure
Schedule commitments can compete with unresolved operational, testing, resource, and change risks.
Leadership Focus
A practical operating model for client-side ERP leadership
The course focuses on leadership work that executives, sponsors, steering committees, CIOs, business leaders, and transformation leaders must continue to own throughout an ERP program.
Operationalize Sponsorship
Translate sponsorship from a title into visible responsibilities, decisions, escalation, and accountability.
Strengthen Governance
Clarify decision rights, priorities, escalation paths, executive oversight, and the purpose of steering governance.
Maintain Client Ownership
Clarify where partners advise, where project teams execute, and where enterprise leadership must decide.
Lead Through Readiness & Change
Connect testing, resources, business readiness, go-live risk, adoption, stabilization, and value realization to leadership responsibility.
Start Leading With a Clearer Model
Prepare sponsors and executives before leadership gaps become project problems.
The course can support sponsor onboarding, steering-committee preparation, transformation kickoffs, leadership refreshers, and recovery or re-initiation situations.
- Executive sponsorship and ownership
- Governance, decision rights, and escalation
- Business and IT accountability
- Risk, readiness, go-live, and change leadership
- Vendor/client boundaries and sustained ownership
- Post-go-live stabilization and value realization
Enrollment opens via Thinkific
Research & Practice Foundation
Built from established theory, ERP research, and practitioner experience
Rather than testimonials, this section shows the intellectual and practitioner foundations used in course development. The course combines behavioral decision theory, major-project research, ERP industry research, enterprise-systems scholarship, governance concepts, and practical ERP delivery experience.
Decision Theory
Daniel Kahneman — Planning Fallacy
The Planning Fallacy helps explain why people can underestimate time, cost, complexity, and risk when planning major initiatives.
Course application: risk awareness, planning realism, assumptions, tradeoffs, and executive challenge.
Major-Project Research
Bent Flyvbjerg — Reference-Class Thinking
Reference-class thinking encourages leaders to compare plans with relevant historical experience rather than rely only on inside-view estimates.
Course application: forecasting discipline, schedule and cost assumptions, risk framing, and executive oversight.
ERP Industry Research
Gartner & Panorama Consulting Group
ERP industry research informed course discussions of program risk, transformation, governance, investment, implementation realities, and organizational readiness.
Course application: ERP leadership context, governance, change, risk, and executive oversight.
Project Performance Research
Standish Group
Project-performance research provides context for the challenges of complex technology initiatives and the importance of scope, decisions, risk, and execution discipline.
Course application: program complexity, leadership oversight, decision discipline, and execution risk.
Enterprise Systems Scholarship
Thomas H. Davenport
Davenport's work helps frame enterprise systems as organizational and operating-model change rather than merely software installation.
Course application: business ownership, process integration, organizational change, and executive accountability.
Practitioner Method
ERP Delivery, Governance & Recovery Experience
The course also translates practical lessons from implementation, recovery, testing, integration, governance, vendor coordination, go-live, and stabilization into executive-level expectations.
Course application: scenarios, decision points, readiness questions, governance behaviors, and recovery leadership.
Evidence discipline: These sources inform concepts, context, and leadership frameworks. They do not establish that completing this course guarantees improved ERP outcomes, lower costs, faster schedules, stronger adoption, or project success.
Practitioner Foundation
20+ Years
ERP and enterprise systems leadership experience
53
ERP projects represented in the documented practitioner record
13
ERP engagements served in a Project Manager role
Experience represented in the course-development record spans Lawson/Infor CloudSuite, HCM, payroll, workforce management, finance, supply chain, implementation, recovery, testing, integration, governance, risk, and vendor leadership.
Who It Is For
For the client leaders accountable for ERP outcomes
Executive Sponsors & Steering Committees
Clarify sponsorship, governance, decisions, escalation, priorities, and accountability.
CIOs & IT Leaders
Define where technology leadership ends and enterprise business ownership must remain engaged.
Business & Functional Executives
Stay engaged in policy, process, resource, priority, and operating-model decisions that cannot be delegated to SMEs.
Transformation & PMO Leaders
Use a common framework to define and reinforce the executive participation the program requires.
Organizational Access
Create a shared leadership framework across the ERP program.
The course can support sponsor onboarding, executive workshops, steering-committee preparation, PMO standards, recovery programs, and partner/client enablement.
Frequently Asked Questions
Course Questions
Is this course for project managers or executives?
The primary audience is client leadership: executive sponsors, steering-committee members, CIOs, business and functional executives, transformation leaders, senior managers, and PMO/program leaders who need stronger executive engagement.
Is the course specific to one ERP platform?
No. The course focuses on client leadership, governance, decisions, accountability, readiness, and transformation ownership rather than one software product.
Does it replace an implementation partner or PMO?
No. It complements project governance, consulting, and implementation-partner delivery by clarifying responsibilities that remain with the client organization.
How long does the course take?
The course takes about 2 hours to complete. Most learners finish it in a single sitting, but you can move through the modules at your own pace.
Leadership Cannot Be Delegated Away
Give ERP leaders a practical model for the responsibilities only the client can own.
Prepare sponsors, executives, and steering committees to lead with clearer governance, decisions, accountability, and ownership.